Tag | Gaming Posts

LAN parties offer the enjoyment of head to head gaming in a real-life social environment. In general, they are experiencing decline thanks to the convenience of Internet gaming, but Kenton Varda is a man who takes his LAN gaming very seriously. His LAN gaming house is a fascinating project, and best of all, Linux plays a part in making it all work.Varda has done his own write ups (short, long), so I'm only going to give an overview here. The setup is a large house with 12 gaming stations and a single ...

One of the things I’ve had to give up in order to have some development time at night is gaming. It’s something I refused to admit for years but I’ve just had to face the facts. I’m no longer a gamer. I just don’t have hours and hours of free time to pour into gaming and when I do have hours and hours of free time I want to pour them into game development. That doesn’t mean I don’t game at all! I play games pretty much every day. It just means I’ve moved more into the casual game realm. It’s all ...

The new HTML standard is part of a proliferation of challenges and opportunities that developers face today: Browser Wars v2.0 Going back 10 years ago, Internet Explorer could claim 95% of the browser market (http://en.wikipedia.org/wi... Today you have to include IE, Firefox, Chrome and Safari to get past the 95% support mark (http://marketshare.hitslin... And this only includes desktop browsers! Safari, the Android browser and Opera all have strong market shares in the mobile/tablet ...

Summary I ran into a visual issue using DirectX (in C# via SlimDX) in which the texture filtering was not aligning properly. This is difficult to describe in words, so read the fully explanation below. The solution is pretty simple, so I decided to post about it in hopes that it is use to another DirectX neophyte in the future. The Problem Like most normal people, in my spare time I work on an open-source emulator for the long-lost 3DO multiplayer video game system (see fourdo.com for all your 3DO ...

Slated to launch on February 1st is Kinect for Windows, are you ready to rush out and buy one of these? I don’t want to come down on this latest venture from Microsoft, but I don’t think its really geared to the average consumer and has a bit of a hill to climb. Don’t get me wrong, I love the Kinect for the Xbox 360 and get it hands down, no pun intended there. I think it by far beats out what the Wii or Playstation have to offer. But is it meant for Windows? The answer in short is yes. Is it meant ...

As many of you may already know that, I'm working at a global gaming and entertainment company taking the responsible for design and implement the next generation platform which will be running on the cloud, and also design the cloud platform as well. Currently one of the goal is to replace the active directory integrated security and identity solution with certificate-based solution in our product. In short, we need to work with Active Directory Certificate Service to request and issue the certificates ...

It’s the end of the year and like everyone else I’m reading the “best of” lists being posted all around the interwebs. Here’s a collection I’ve gathered of all the “best of” lists for XBLIGs. XNADevelopment – Best XBLIGs of 2011 If you have your own, let me know and I’ll get you added to my collection. There’s quite a few gems I missed that I’m seeing on those lists so I’m looking forward to doing some gaming as I ring in the New Year! Happy New Year everyone ...

I’ve been playing Age of Empires online now for a few months and I really like the game. I’ve always been a fan of the series, and they did an excellent job on this one as well. They’ve made it free to play, but, of course, if you want all of the features, you’ll need to purchase a pro civilization, which I’ve done. I figure that I’d pay $50 for the game if they had released it in the traditional way, so the price was actually quite reasonable. If you like RTS games, this is a great one to add to ...

Its been several months since I last updated my blog. I don't really have an excuse other than just being busy. My gaming had taken alot of my time and well, I had to make a tough decision. When you really think about it, its not really a tough decision, it is just the right one. That decision is of course that my development is more important. Enough of my excuses. I have began resource gathering and interface concepts for my first project. Its called Novus. Now this may or maynot be the final name ...

I am not the fastest typist… I know it. Up till about a year ago I was a two finger typist and my two fingers could fly over the keyboard doing all sorts of acrobatics getting me up to a whopping 30 odd words per minute. Not bad for two fingers but barely close to some of my friends who speed away at 90+ words a minute using both hands. So it bugged me…. I mean I would like to consider myself a professional developer and feel that if I will be typing most of days then I should at least be doing it ...

Silverlight 5 provides graphics capabilities which you can use to enrich your applications and make them more attractive. While graphics support in Silverlight is not as comprehensive as in WPF, it is still useful in many scenarios. This article describes the built-in support in Silverlight 5 for graphics. This article will not go into XNA or gaming related graphics. Graphics can generally be categorized as two-dimensional (2-D) and 3-D. Read more of this article at: http://www.c-sharpcorner.co... ...

C++ is a very powerful language. Well written native C++ code can perform much better than managed languages like C# and Java due to optimizations that the managed systems are not able to perform during run-time compilation (if this is done at all, that is). This is great for developers who work on gaming technology for instance. For people concerned with game logic, performance isn’t necessarily priority number one, but productivity and the ability to express oneself without too much head banging. ...

Ok… it doesn’t really but this still cheered my Thursday eve. Whilst perusing the blog of BF3 I spotted that publisher behemoth EA were doing an “innocent poll” on mobile devices. As background, BF3 is arguably the game of 2011 which puts PC gaming back on the map for mainstream FPS fans, easily outshining what will be available for Consoles. It is also worth pointing out that the poll isn’t so innocent in the sense that EA are making a massive push into mobile gaming – which also happens to include ...

I just got back from Microsoft’s 15,000 attendee-strong Worldwide Partner Conference (WPC) in Los Angeles, and I have to say, the company and its partners are pumped. How can this be, given the number of people who have written Microsoft’s eulogy of late? If Amazon owns the cloud, if Apple owns the consumer, if Google owns search, if Cisco owns unified communications, if EMC/VMWare owns virtualization, if Oracle and SAP own ERP and if Oracle/Siebel and Salesforce.com own CRM, how can Microsoft be ...

I wanted to take this time to introduce myself. My name is Roger O'Dell Jr. My development training is in .NET, but my current job requires me to work with Java and Android. I have been doing mobile development now for almost a year. And what a year it has been. I had the opportunity to go to a Microsoft Conference in Overland Park, KS last year. While I was there, I was one of the lucky few who was introduced to Windows Phone 7. Coming from an ASP.NET background, I found the new Windows Phone to ...

· XNA communication must by default be lightweight – if you are syncing game state between players from the Game.Update method, you must minimize traffic. That game loop may be firing 60 times a second and player 5 needs to know if his tank has collided with any player 3 and the angle of that gun turret. There are no WCF ServiceContract / DataContract niceties here, but at the same time the XNA networking stack simplifies the details. The payload must be simplistic - just an ordered set of numbers ...

Windows Phone 7 Sweepstakes end June 30th, 2011 [US based developers only] As the Microsoft fiscal year closes so are the number of contest and promotions. We’re in the final week for this amazing contest: URL: http://bit.ly/WP7DevOffer Code: GS2N6 Got 1 app in the Marketplace? Enter for a chance to win a Samsung Focus. Details & rules on the site. Very simple. This specific contest for Samsung Focus has been extended through July 31st 2011. Got 2 apps in the Marketplace? Get a refund on your ...

Windows Phone 7 and Windows Phone 7.1 codename Mango was the topic of the event held today in Helsinki at the Finnkino movie theater Tennispalatsi. Microsoft Finland had invited two top notch speakers from Redmond namely Brandon Watson and Jaime Rodriguez. Following the recent public announcement of the new version of the platform this was one of the first events on the subject. The keynote of the event mostly concerned the overall vision and idea of the Windows Phone 7 platform but the following ...

This has been a fantastic week of XNA activity and news. Standing ovation the the XNA Team for the interaction they’ve been having with the community as well as the new features they’ve been rolling out for Xbox LIVE Indie Game developers. Simply outstanding and I can’t wait to see what might be coming next. It’s also been a fun week to watch people’s Dream Build Play projects inch ever closer to completion. With the submission deadline coming up in June this is the crunch time for many developers. ...

If you are: a senior technologist (Application Architect, Senior Developer or similar) with strong experience in developing solutions using the Windows platform (Visual Studio, SQL Server, IIS etc) fancy working for Microsoft UK and are not put off by these pictures of my team (and it is before 1st May 2011) then I would highly recommend you check out the job posting for two positions as Architect Evangelists in my team. My personal ideal “new colleague” would also: Enjoy online FPS gaming and be ...

I’m a gamer. When I started out, I had the classic Nintendo and thought it was awesome. That eventually evolved into a Super Nintendo, and with that I would say I became a gamer. Back then, the web wasn’t much of anything yet. The Internet wasn’t a household item, never mind high-speed Internet. When it came to gaming. The PC did it’s best when it came to games, but web really didn’t have much going on. Even when Flash games became a thing, there really wasn’t much to talk about except for the ads ...

This week was a busy one for the XNA Community and one that had a series of ups and downs. You might have noticed by now (or maybe you haven’t and I shouldn’t be pointing this out..) that I tend to only point out the ups. That’s very much on purpose and something I thought long and hard about before I started doing XNA Notes. It’s too easy to let the bad stuff spread like a virus and seem overwhelming (something to do with human nature and there’s probably a science and psychology behind it). When ...

Even with a lot of the XNA community working on Dream Build Play entries ( I swear I’m going to finish mine this year!) people are still finding time to do side projects and be amazingly active in the XNA and XBLIG community. With my one eye on my code and one eye on the community, here’s what I noticed these over achievers doing this past week! Time Critical XNA News: Xbox LIVE Indie Games sales data will be delayed March 17-20th due to some schedule maintenance http://create.msdn.com/en-u... ...

Hey guys, I am living in the CeBIT's hometown, the beautiful city Hanover. So I am visiting this exhibition since 2002 and I've seen a lot of changes during all this time. But this time, it was the most boring fair I've ever seen. Lets start with the first halls: "The same procedure as every year"- directly behind the entrance are the exhibitioners from far east (China, Taiwan...). In the past, they've shown a lot of nice toys. But this time, they got very serious, the only great gimmick was the ...

Last night my wife’s Nexus One finally bit the dust. You may not know but I’ve been nursing her Nexus One one along for quite a while after her screen shattered. I was able to replace it on my own (go me!) but little quirks have been popping up and the phone was quickly deteriorating. Lately it’s been the power button. Wifey would often have to press the power button several times to get her phone to turn on and last night it just wouldn’t wake up again. I took it apart and tried my best to see if ...

Many months ago I came across an interesting Microsoft website, the TechNet Wiki, when I was looking for information about something that I can’t even remember anymore. I noticed at the time that its section on gaming technologies was sparse and even exchanged a few emails with one of the friendly Microsoft employees who contributes there regularly about some ideas I had for the site. I seem to recall mentioning my intentions to add some articles on XNA when I found the time but between one thing ...

I recently acquired a Samsung Focus Windows Phone 7 device from AT&T and wanted to share what I thought of it as an end-user. Before I get started, here are several of my write-ups for the Windows Phone 7. You may want to check out the second article titled: Hands-on WP7 Review of Prototype Hardware. From start to finish with the final version of Visual Studio Tools for Windows Phone 7 Hands-on : Windows Phone 7 Review on Prototype Hardware. Deploying your Windows Phone 7 Application to the actual ...

I recently bought Call Of Duty: Black Ops for the PC. It's a really realistic and challenging game, and my kids love it. However, if you want to share a gaming experience, you want to have different profiles for each player in the family. No luck with CoD:BO though. The game doesn't support mutliple profiles. I started looking around on the internet for known solutions and stumbled upon this guy who made his own multi-profile CoD:BO launcher. I was quick to notice that it was a .net 3.5 app, probably ...

The release of the recent update to the Xbox 360’s dashboard has caused quite a commotion among the Xbox LIVE Indie Games (“XBLIG”) community. The primary reasons for this have been a negative response to various changes that have occurred in regards to XBLIG’s look and presence on the Xbox. Unfortunately, what was an “Indie Developers Unhappy With Dashboard Changes” story has been slowly corrupted into a “Microsoft Wants To Kill XBLIG” story. I undoubtedly played a part in that with my post here ...

With year end approaching fast, I thought I'd make a shortlist of upcoming technologies that will be popular in 2011. Nintendo 3DS - Handheld gaming device with 3D effects without the need for 3D glasses. Windows Phone 7 - Recently released WP7 will likely gain increasing mobile phone market share in 2011. Internet enabled TV - TVs with integrated internet access, app store for apps built specifically to run on full sized screen TVs ...

I am using the mouse with my left hand but I am not swapping the mouse buttons. (Old habit from the times I was using public workstations at the university. I was too lazy to play with the system setup every time, so that I just moved the mouse from the right to the left side.) I am also using multiple pointing devices with my notebook. (a gaming mouse with multiple buttons at home, a simpler one at work, and also from time to time the touchpad ). Normally I would setup the mouse button layout in ...

Disclaimer: I’m not an IT Pro, I’m a hobbyist hardware guy at best. The below post is a recount of my experience but modifying anything in your system is done at your own risk. If in doubt, seek professional help. I’ve been having issues with my system crashing while playing Star Craft 2. I rebuilt my system about a month ago into a pretty decent gaming system (not crazy by any measure, I’m not an overclocker, but very capable). Over that time I’ve had random system crashes while playing. Examining ...

It has been a while since my last blog post. I have been busy and lazy at the same time and couldn't find the time to get around posting new blog posts. I have been thinking of writing a blog post series on ASP.NET MVC for Web Forms Programmers. Especially because I am planning to give presentations at .NET User Group meetings and Code Camps starting this October-November. So, now I need to buy a 17" screen laptop with Windows 7 64-bit with 8GB RAM. I have always been a Desktop guy because I hate ...

Announced today during gamescom 2010 in Cologne Germany was some huge news for those of us looking forward to Windows Phone 7 and mobile gaming on Xbox Live. Not only do we now have an extensive list of games coming out at launch, but they have also given us some solid details on what to expect from the Games Hub and Xbox Live as well. One of the best features I’m happy to hear about is that Live Messaging between your Gaming friends will be available via the WP7 device. That means we can stay in ...

Time for the Monday Postback (08.09.2010), this is where I'll do a brief rundown of last weeks progress here at dotGeek. Kind of easy to report back with not a whole lot really in the beginning, having just started things off... but here goes nothing. So I've settled on the template "Dirtylicious" and kicked things off this past Friday with my first post. Took me just a bit to find the templates, they seemed to be wedged between things and not really obvious. I suppose I was just use to some of the ...

I've been working on a new podcast for the game development community called the Deep Fried Devcast. Currently we are in pre-production but should have some episodes up in the near future. Here is a quick FAQ about the show: What is the Deep Fried Devcast? The Deep Fried Devcast is a bi-weekly show all about game development. The show will feature developer interviews, a focus on the technical aspects of game development (programming, technical design), the business of team game development (time ...

Well I switched back to Sony. After about a year of debating whether or not to keep my XBox 360 or get a PS3 I decided over the weekend to trade in the 360 for a PS3. I had thought about keeping both but I really don’t need two gaming systems. So far I like it, the graphics are good and the game selection is pretty much the same. For me the game exclusives didn’t sway me one way or the other (i.e. I’ve never played Halo so you can’t miss what you never played). My main reasons for switching were: ...

Sometimes I wonder the pundits of cloud computing are way to consumed with the enterprise applications. With all the CAPEX / OPEX, ROI-talk taking the center stage, an opportunity to affect masses directly is getting overlooked. I am a self proclaimed die hard gamer. I come from the generation of gamers who started their journey in DOS games like Wolfenstein 3D and Allan Border Cricket (the latter is still a favorite pastime). In the late 90s, a revolution called accelerated graphics started in DirectX ...

Just getting more stuff “down on paper” which grabbed my attention over the last couple of weeks. http://www.koodibook.com/ is live. This is a a rich desktop application built in WPF by some ex-colleagues and current friends :-) Check it out if “photo books” is your thing or you like sweet WPF UX. Study rates Microsoft .NET Framework rated top, Ruby on Rails 2nd bottom. I know a bit about both of these frameworks. Both are sweet for different reasons. .NET top. Ok – I liked that. But Ruby on Rails ...

I’ve been doing a series of talks across Florida regarding Windows Phone 7 Design using Microsoft Expression Blend 4. I discuss the WP7 phone and application experience; show how to use Expression Blend toolset to effectively design such apps. Next presentation is on 5/5/2010 at 6:30PM EST will be a webcast format over LiveMeeting at Ft. Lauderdale Online group. Registration and the LiveMeeting link are both here: http://www.fladotnet.com/Re... [I will post a link if it’s recorded] ...

Soon, the U.S. Supreme Court may decide whether to hear a case that could have a lasting impact on computer and video games. The case before the Court involves a law passed by the state of California attempting to criminalize the sale of certain computer and video games. Two previous courts rejected the California law as unconstitutional, but soon the Supreme Court could have the final say. Whatever the Court's ruling, we must be prepared to continue defending our rights now and in the future. To ...

Recently I've decided, in true nerd fashion, to collect either comic books or video games. Considering I'm much more versed in the technological arts and not in ACTUAL art, I thought collecting old video games would be an interesting venture. After all, I am a self-described compulsive shopper (my bank statement at the end of the month has a purchase every few days). (Don't worry, I'm not in debt and still pay my bills on time!) I went to a local video game store in Stevens Point called Gaming Generations ...

This terms is often used with many meanings. For example, some people consider Flash 'open' and 'multi-platform' . But Flash is a product of Adobe systems, locked down, copy protected and distribution restricted. And versions for other than standard PC, home use, may carry licence fees. Check it out: 3.1 Adobe Runtime Restrictions. You will not use any Adobe Runtime on any non-PC device or with any embedded or device version of any operating system. For the avoidance of doubt, and by example only, ...

Come late 2000 and I started experiencing first symptoms of a disease which would haunt me the rest of my life. Its not that I am complaining though its actually been a blessing in disguise this Upgraditis :). First upgrades to the machine listed in the previous post were the processor, motherboard and RAM. Processor – Pentium III (Coppermine) 733 It was a time when the GHz war was yet to begin. AMD was just brimming ear to ear with the success of the Duron and we in the Indian hinterlands were still ...

Every so often I Wordle my delicious account to see “where I’m at”. This is a spookily accurate depiction of my online life at the moment :-) Therefore… Related Links: UK Azure Online Community – UK Online community for Azure fans http://www.eurogamer.net/ My favourite online fix for gaming news http://badcompanytwo.com/ My next Xbox 360 game – should keep me busy for many months http://bit.ly/ef4resources All the best Entity Framework resource links in one place :-) ...